About the author

Donn Risolo has been a soccer writer, editor and publicist since 1973. His new book, “Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats,” was released recently by the University of Nebraska Press.

"From conspiracy to controversy, this is a unique look at famous and not-so-famous incidents from world soccer. There's something here for all who love the game."

-- JP Dellacamera
World Cup and Olympic soccer commentator

"Risolo's Soccer Stories is precisely what it promises to be .... The author delivers it all in conversational, enthusiastic, and readable prose."

-- Benjamin D. Lisle
Journal of Sport History

"Fans will get a kick out of Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats. Read about highlights in soccer history from around the world, including Brazilian players paid in cattle, an African club that scored 149 goals against itself in one game, and more."

Landon Donovan played his final match for the U.S. National Team, a 1-1 tie with Ecuador in a friendly in East Hartford, CT.

An adoring sellout crowd of 36,265 at Rentschler Field bade farewell to Donovan, 32, who leaves as the USA’s all-time leader in goals (57), assists (58), starts (142) and minutes played (12,853).

Donovan played a small part in Mix Diskerud’s goal in the fifth minute. He later rang the right post with a shot in the 25th minute, grounded an attempt wide and saw another shot smothered by Ecuadoran ‘keeper Maximo Banguera before exiting for Joe Corona in the 41st. In the 88th minute, with Donovan long gone, striker Enner Valencia spoiled the party somewhat when he equalized on a looping shot.

Donovan’s 157 caps are second only to Cobi Jones’ 164; the U.S. was 90-36-31 when he played, and 11-3-5 when he was captain. He played a record 15 years as a member of the full U.S. team, tied with a non-field player, goalkeeper Kasey Keller. Donovan was a seven-time winner of the Honda Player of the Year award and was named U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year four times.

The impish forward-midfielder announced two months ago that he will also retire as a player when the Los Angeles Galaxy’s season concludes later this fall. He is Major League Soccer’s all-time leader in goals (144) and assists (136), and has won five MLS championships. [October 10]

Comment: Thus endth the international career of the greatest player ever produced by America. With about five minutes left in the half, Donovan and coach Juergen Klinsmann, who controversially cut Donovan from his 2014 World Cup squad, exchanged an awkward embrace at the touchline, and the only U.S. male soccer player many Americans could name was gone. Over the past five months the snub–costing Donovan a U.S.-record fourth trip to a World Cup–became the biggest soap opera in U.S. National Team history, dwarfing the sacking of captain John Harkes by then-coach Steve Sampson on the eve of the 1998 World Cup. What began as a discussion of player form and the subjective nature of a coach’s player selections mushroomed to almost Freudian proportions.

No one will know exactly how this coda to Donovan’s career in red, white and blue came about. Most will summarize it by pointing to Donovan’s five-month soccer sabbatical in 2012-13, causing the driven Klinsmann to question the player’s commitment to the national team and his profession in general. But this appears to be a case of Klinsmann regarding Donovan as a prized pupil, a player held to a much higher standard than, say, defender and dual citizen Timmy Chandler, who waffled from 2011 to 2013 before at long last agreeing to play for the U.S., not his homeland, Germany.

Here’s what Klinsmann had to say the day before the Ecuador friendly:

“As a coach, you always want to see a player drive for his 100 percent. I’m looking at Landon always that I wish, in a certain way, he could have done a bit more here and a bit more there. But he had a tremendous career and he deserves that farewell tomorrow night and all the compliments on your end as well.”

And Klinsmann’s wishes go all the way back to 2008, when Donovan, who had already struck out as a kid with Bayer Leverkusen and was striking out on loan to Bayern Munich, had nevertheless captured the fancy of Munich’s coach. That happened to be Klinsmann, who would last only one stormy season with the club known in Germany as FC Hollywood. Said German legend and Munich general manager Uli Hoeness later, “Juergen really wanted us to sign the guy, but to be honest, he wasn’t even good enough for our second team.” (Donovan would go on to prove his European mettle during loan stints in England with Everton in 2010 and 2012.)

So where did it go sour between Donovan and the man who some six years ago was one of his biggest boosters? And why? Did Klinsmann chase Donovan into a premature retirement as a professional player? It should be noted that Klinsmann won a European Championship when he was Donovan’s age and two years later he played in one more World Cup. So it should also be asked how much more Donovan could’ve accomplished in MLS as an elder statesman. But the primary question remains the one fans have been asking since the U.S. was eliminated from the 2014 World Cup on July 1: What would Landon Donovan have done in Brazil?

Bayern Munich forward Julian Green has applied to FIFA to change his national team association from Germany to the United States.

The highly touted 18-year-old, who was born in Tampa, FL, will become the latest German-American to join the U.S. National Team pool under the USA’s German coach, Juergen Klinsmann, following in the footsteps of dual-nationalists Jermaine Jones (Besiktas, Turkey), Timmy Chandler (FC Nurnberg), Fabian Johnson (Hoffenheim), John Brooks (Hertha Berlin), Daniel Williams (Reading, England), Terrence Boyd (Rapid Austria) and Alfredo Morales (FC Ingolstadt).

The son of an American father and German mother, Green moved with his family to Germany when he was 2. He played for Germany’s under-16 and under-17 teams, then represented the U.S. in an U-18 friendly against Holland. He later played for Germany in a qualifier for this year’s UEFA Under-19 Championship.

“We are absolutely thrilled,” said Klinsmann, who first attempted to call up Green for U.S. friendlies in November. “He is a very special talent.”

The teen winger has made just one appearance for Bayern Munich, a brief stint in November at the end of a UEFA Champions League match against CSKA Moscow. Green has been a regular with Bayern’s Regionalliga team, scoring 15 goals in 19 games. [March 18]

Comment: Green is unlikely to play a role in the USA’s adventure at Brasil ’14, but this June we will finally learn whether the German way is the American way when it comes to soccer.

Back in the mid-1970s, when the growth of the North American Soccer League was forcing a spotlight on the American game in general and the national team in particular, the U.S. Soccer Federation took the tack that the style that best suited its team was German. It hired Dettmar Cramer, an assistant to Helmet Schoen on West Germany’s 1966 World Cup runner-up team, as coach in August 1974. Cramer was in charge long enough to lose two games to Mexico, throw up his hands at the lack of talent, money and organization at his disposal and, 5 1/2 months into his tenure, returned home, where he would guide a Bayern Munich starring Franz Beckenbauer to consecutive European Cup titles. Less than a decade later, the USSF tried again with the appointment of former FC Cologne coach Karl-Heinz Heddergott as national coaching director, but Heddergott ran into the same frustrating constraints. All the while, critics of this Teutonic shift claimed that the national team program–if “program” was the right word–was ignoring the coming USA wave of Latin players, eventually led by hyphenated Americans Hugo Perez, Tab Ramos, and Claudio Reyna, that would transform the national team and carry it to glory.

The U.S. has had a link with German soccer that dates to 1923 with the founding of the powerful semipro German-American Soccer League (later renamed the Cosmopolitan Soccer League) in New York, a circuit whose best players helped make up the roster of the original New York Cosmos in 1971. Paul Caliguiri made a major–and unlikely–breakthrough when he leaped from UCLA to Hamburger SV in the late 1980s. He later played for SV Meppen, Hansa Rostock, SC Freiburg and FC St. Pauli, paving the way in the Bundesliga for players like Eric Wynalda, Kasey Keller and Steve Cherundolo. U.S. coach Bora Milutinovic’s decision to bring FC Kaiserslautern midfielder Tom Dooley–son of an American serviceman and a German mother–into the national team fold established a two-way street whose inbound lane has only increased in traffic by plenty under Klinsmann.

But it’s not just personnel. Klinsmann has tapped into characteristics common between the two cultures. Despite shortcomings that continue to keep the U.S. out of the top 10 in the FIFA rankings, the Americans’ compulsion, like the Germans, is to attack. On a good day, Klinsmann has his players pressing forward–some would say recklessly–at speed with six and seven players, followed, at speed, by a similar commitment on defense. High tempo, hard work. They expect to win every challenge. They count on wearing down the opposition long before the final whistle. And like the West German teams Klinsmann grew up watching and then playing for, they now consider no deficit insurmountable. The U.S. demonstrated that resolve by tying host Russia, 2-2, in late 2012 on two late strikes. The following June, in a World Cup qualifier, it squandered a 1-0 lead late in Jamaica and emerged with a 2-1 victory.

Above all, for those who remember Steve Sampson’s team of complacent U.S. veterans who crashed at the 1998 World Cup, Klinsmann has called out his established players, introduced interesting outsiders and created a player pool that may not be deep but is certainly competitive as the 30 players with a realistic chance to make the trip to Brazil are whittled to the final 23.

The critics from long ago must feel permanently slighted at this point: Klinsmann has turned his back on any possibility that Latin flair is the USA’s recipe for success. It’ll be grit, not beauty, heading into Brazil this year. Some of the players may have names like Omar Gonzalez, Michael Orozco Fiscal, Joe Corona or Juan Agudelo, but it’s not the name, it’s the mentality and the approach. After all, when Klinsmann’s looked over his shoulder two years ago at the German National Team he once coached, the joint scoring leader of the European Championship was a German named … Mario Gomez.

On the eve of the U.S. National Team’s World Cup qualifiers against Costa Rica on March 22 in Denver and Mexico on March 26 in Mexico City, The Sporting News ran an article that has called into question USA coach Juergen Klinsmann’s ability to lead the team.

Coming off the USA’s lackluster loss at Honduras on February 6 in the opening game of the six-nation CONCACAF finals for Brasil ’14, TSN writer Brian Straus quoted numerous present and former U.S. internationals–anonymously–who questioned Klinsmann’s tactical acumen, communication skills and controversial personnel changes, including a reliance on German-born newcomers.

Citing the Honduras match, Straus wrote, “The performance that day, as well as a lack of obvious improvement during his 19 months in charge, has alarmed the American soccer community and unearthed considerable discontent.” [March 21]

Comment: Is this France ’98 all over again, when then-U.S. coach Steve Sampson lost his team and sailed it directly into the rocks? Is Klinsmann the fellow who, with the highly regarded Joachim Lowe as his right-hand man, led Germany to a highly unlikely third-place finish at the 2006 World Cup? Or is he the ex-genius who, with current U.S. assistant Martin Vasquez at his side, crashed and burned three years later as coach of the German giant known as FC Hollywood, Bayern Munich?

Much will be revealed over the next few days. The USA goes into these two qualifiers without the soul-searching Landon Donovan, as well as injured goalkeeper Tim Howard and injured defenders Timmy Chandler and Fabian Johnson. The defense, whose biggest absentee is venerable right back Steve Cherundolo (knee surgery), could be the most inexperienced in recent memory. The captain, meanwhile, will be attacking midfielder Clint Dempsey in place of center back Carlos Bocanegra, whose advanced age and lack of speed finally prompted Klinsmann to drop him from the roster altogether.

The day before the Costa Rica match, Klinsmann reminded the media of where he stood: “If we do things exactly the same way, we are not improving.” Indeed, and that’s what Klinsmann was hired not to do. If he succeeds in “taking the players out of their comfort zone” (his mantra since assuming the U.S. helm) and gets results, this early hexagonal angst will have been worth it. If he doesn’t, it will, among other things, reveal the suspicion that, no matter the coach, the U.S. player pool remains woefully thin–too thin to experiment with.

Bob Bradley, U.S. National Team coach since 2007, was fired during a meeting with U.S. Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati and federation CEO Dan Flynn at the Home Depot Center outside Los Angeles.

The USSF said it would have a further annoncement in two days. [July 28]